Kobe said after the game this was as bad a sprain as he had dealt with since the 2000 playoffs and he didn’t have a timeline for a return, Trudell tweeted.

The good news is the X-rays were negative. But an ankle sprain could keep even Kobe and his ridiculous pain threshold on the bench for a week or two at a time the Lakers can’t afford to be without their MVP.

The Thunder spanked the Jazz on Wednesday so the Lakers remain just half a game ahead of Utah for the eighth spot in the West and are 1.5 back of the seven-seed Rockets (who have eight of their next nine at home). The Lakers have 16 games left on the schedule.

Kobe sprained his ankle on the Lakers final shot of the game, a baseline jumper where Dahntay Jones contested. Kobe’s left foot came down on Jones’ foot. As he landed you could see his left ankle buckle. He immediately fell to the floor, grabbed it and pain and tried to walk it off, but instead limped to the locker room.

On the replay this did not look like a full on Bruce Bowen intentional slide under the guy move, but Kobe didn’t see it that way according to tweets after the game. He said the league has to protect shooters and compared this to 200o, when he felt Jalen Rose intentionally slid a foot under him (something Rose pretty much owned up to years later).

Kobe Bryant on Dahntay Jones' part in the play: "I can't get my mind past the fact that I've got to wait a year to get revenge."

It had not been a great Kobe night — he had 31 points but on 11-of-33 shooting. He tried to push a flat Lakers team on the second night of a back-to-back, and he pushed it right to the end, right up to that contested jumper.

But without that kind of nightly push from Kobe it’s hard to see how the Lakers can sustain the kind of winning percentage they have had in recent weeks.